


Common Denominator

by thirty2flavors



Series: in absentia [4]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Missing Scene, mid-episode 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 08:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14398311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirty2flavors/pseuds/thirty2flavors
Summary: Getting Jack out of his head isn’t as easy as merely digging out every implant. Every dark thought that crosses Rhys’ mind has been given a voice, and the masked face to match.//After Helios, Rhys is alone. Mostly.





	Common Denominator

**Author's Note:**

> Ah the final piece in my "everyone is extremely sad" series. Goes along with [the thing with feathers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10685532) (Fiona), [Asymmetry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11202996) (Sasha), and [White Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13575501) (Yvette & Vaughn). 
> 
> Seemed fitting to end with Rhys, after starting with Fiona.

“This’ll be fine,” Rhys tells himself—aloud, because by the time he finally arrives at the Atlas facility, the silence has started to make him itch. “This place is definitely mostly habitable. I mean, Cassius made it work, so… jackpot.” 

No one answers him, of course, because there’s no one around, not even in his head anymore. 

On the plus side, there’s no one to call him on the flagrant lie.

His head feels like someone took an icepick to it (not far off, actually), the vision in his one remaining eye is blurry, he lists to the left when he walks and there’s definitely not as much blood left in his body as there ought to be. 

“Could be worse,” he says, and then he passes out three feet inside the doorway. 

* * *

Everything happens in a fog for a while.

First it’s the haze of pain, and then—once he finds the med bay—the strongest cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics anyone’s ever haphazardly shoved into their mouth one-handed. By the time he regains the ability to stay conscious for over twelve consecutive hours, he’s got bandages where he needs them and nothing but snippets for memories.

Which is probably for the best. Probably it was both embarrassing and disgusting, like when he first got his implants and accidentally punched himself in the face while trying to shave. 

Probably he’d just be repressing it anyway, so this is saving time. Efficient, really.

* * *

You have to be pretty stupid to fall for a lie even when you know it’s a lie.

That’s the thing Rhys comes back to, in the months after Helios, when he has time to think again. (So much time, really. Too much. Absolutely lousy with it.) Not half an hour after meeting Sasha and Fiona, he learned what kind of people they were, the things they could do, the stories they spun. He _knew_ , and he still…

He’s such an idiot.

He’s an idiot, and he has a hundred questions he’ll never get answered. What happened, anyway? Did they get spooked on Helios, cut their losses and run? Or was it more calculated than that? 

It was probably Fiona’s decision, he figures, because Fiona makes most of the decisions. But when did she decide? Right after that door closed between them? As soon as they arrived on Helios, or had she waited until the station started to fall? 

Had Sasha argued with her, or was she all for it? 

Did either of them feel a twinge of regret? Did they even look back? 

Had there ever been a point where they thought of him as their friend? 

He also wonders if they at least found the damn Vault. That he could probably get an answer to, if he wanted. A giant alien treasure-trove seems like the kind of thing that would make its way into local legend and gossip. But he doesn’t investigate, because he can’t decide what he’d want the answer to be. On one hand, fuck ‘em. They used him and they left him to die and he’s very, very angry about that.

On the other…

He pictures Fiona on a Dionysian beach, relaxed at long last, in a sunhat with a brim so wide it shades her shoulders. He pictures Sasha lounging in a pool chair, spinning the umbrella around the rim of her mai-tai, finally free of the planet she’d hated. 

His chest aches. Maybe it’s his fault. Maybe things would be different, if he’d been honest about Jack from the start. 

Or maybe they’d have shot him on the spot. 

He’s only got one hand right now anyway. Fuck them. 

* * *

Getting Jack out of his head isn’t as easy as merely digging out every implant with a shard of glass.

Rhys jumps at shadows sometimes. Sees things in the corner of his eye. He stops wearing a tie or buttoning his collar so that nothing’s tight around his neck. Jack’s colour commentary still comes in and out in surround sound, as impossible to ignore as it ever was. Every dark thought that crosses Rhys’ mind has been given a voice, and the masked face to match.

The new cybernetics are clean. Rhys knows they are. They must be—they’re brand new, custom made, and besides, the AI program is lying in shattered pieces hundreds of miles away. Still, to be safe, he runs every diagnostic in the book (plus a few that aren’t) and installs firewalls so strong he briefly loses access to his own eye. 

No, the cybernetics are fine. It’s the organic part of his brain that needs a good defrag. Virus scan. Malware removal. 

Probably he just needs some time to adjust to having his head to himself again. It’s a big change, even if it’s a welcome one. Like junior year, when he and Vaughn moved out of their shitty dorm room and into a shitty two-bedroom apartment. Soon enough, it’ll all settle back to normal. Everything will be fine. 

Probably.

In the meantime… 

He’d go in with another shard of glass if he thought it might help.

* * *

Rhys has a lot of time on his hands, now that he’s got both of them again.

Fortunately, he has an absurd amount of work to do, what with revamping a company he sort-of stole-slash-sort-of owns and an entire abandoned secret base to explore. He wants to know where Atlas left off before he decides where it ought to go next. The Gortys project, the biodome—what else did they have up their sleeve? 

He digs through mountains of records and classified documents, and because datamining is his thing, thank you very much, it’s not even that hard. He learns what he can about plants and terraforming and bioengineering, with moderate success. He names Cassius’ desk plant Harvey. 

He wants to map the whole facility, so he writes an app and goes for a walk. He’s so distracted by keeping an eye on his own code that he trips, and when he rights himself again he’s at the base of a tree covered in purple blossoms.

“Oh,” he says, even though there’s no one around. “Right. You.”

He feels winded, which he tells himself is definitely because of the fall. Temporarily forgotten, his metal hand and its mapping tool hang at his side. 

The flowers aren’t as pretty as he remembers them; they’ve wilted a little, and their colour isn’t as vibrant. Some have already fallen to the ground. Must be nearing the end of their season. The thought makes him sad, which is stupid. It’s just a tree. Still, he finds himself staring at the petals that have fallen near his boots.

_How do I look?_ he hears, a months-old echo. 

Rhys walks away quickly, shaking his head and scowling at his code. _Beautiful_ , he’d wanted to tell her but hadn’t. She’d looked beautiful.

He imagines Jack laughing at him. “Oh, princess, you must’ve been the easiest mark in the world.” 

Rhys sniffs and blinks away the sting in his eyes.

* * *

Probability was never Rhys’ strong suit. He’d spent most of stats class daydreaming about the cute TA and mooching off Vaughn’s notes enough to scrape a passing grade. 

Still, he’s pretty confident there are only two possibilities.

Possibility One is that Vaughn is dead. There are a million ways to die on Pandora, most of them gruesome. Bandits, skags, skin parties, rakks, exposure and dehydration and starvation—it doesn’t really matter which one. The important thing is they all end up the same way: with Vaughn—good old reliable Vaughn, the best friend Rhys has ever had in his life—six feet under. Finito. Pushing Pandoran daisies.

Rhys doesn’t like to think about Possibility One.

Possibility Two is that Vaughn’s still alive. He made it away from Vallory’s men and found a settlement, or a group, or someone in dire need of math, and he’s fine. Maybe he’s even thriving. Rhys has always known that Vaughn is tougher than he looks, even before the sixpack. Against the odds, Vaughn survived Hyperion. Vaughn survived _Rhys_. Maybe Vaughn can survive Pandora, too.

It’s the good one, Possibility Two. The better option by far. Rhys would bet the farm on it.

But nestled inside the promise of Possibility Two is a truth that Rhys has spent years ignoring: that maybe Vaughn is better off without him. Maybe Vaughn is safer without Rhys around to drag him into harebrained schemes that never go the way they’re meant to. Maybe the best thing Rhys can do for Vaughn, as a friend, is leave him alone.

Besides, if Rhys were to look for Vaughn, he might learn the answer is Possibility One, and that… that’s too much. Rhys isn’t ready for Possibility One. Maybe he never will be.

So he doesn’t look. Doesn’t even try. 

“Coward,” Jack says. Rhys thinks he’s probably right about that.

* * *

Atlas has an absolutely insane amount of data to go through. Rhys would complain about it, but it gives him something to do, and it’s a good way to test, modify and upgrade the software in his new arm.

Still—their content management system is _garbage_ , a poorly-designed organizational structure exacerbated by a history of employee misuse. Everything is on here, in badly-labelled folders with impossible-to-follow naming conventions. He even uncovers a gigabyte worth of information detailing the slow breakdown of an in-office marriage, complete with a scanned copy of divorce papers and a letter from HR. 

Sorting and deleting and refiling the data is both labour-intensive and mind-numbing, so Rhys does it in chunks, with his chin in his left hand and a bowl of fruit in easy reach. He’s half-asleep and two hours deep into fastforwarding through archived security footage—almost entirely worthless, save for the occasional excitement of a firefight—when he selects a new file and feels a jolt of adrenaline down his spine.

There on the screen, in the grainy black-and-white footage, a pixelated version of himself walks into the room, followed by Sasha and Fiona, and then Athena. Gortys zooms around on the floor. Loaderbot lumbers in with Vaughn tied to his back.

Rhys sits bolt upright in his chair, slack-jawed, watching the tiny silent people mill around the screen. Conversations come back to him in soundbytes: Sasha calling him a corporation. Fiona and Athena at the latte machine. Cassius' cat. Vaughn's dry eyes.

Rhys feels like he’s been electrocuted.

“Well, well, wouldja look at that,” laughs the voice Rhys has spent the better part of a year trying to forget. “Something for your scrapbook. Little family photo. You’ll have to photoshop me in. Use one of those old ‘motivational’ posters.” 

Rhys closes his eyes, trying to regulate his breathing and his suddenly-thumping heart. 

“Jack’s dead,” he tells himself, voice steady. “Jack’s gone. You’re fine.”

“Oh, yeah, totally fine,” Jack agrees, as loud as if he were at Rhys’ shoulder. “Sittin’ here, talking to yourself, watching low-res footage of a bunch of people who betrayed you… You’re the picture of mental health, kid.” 

Rhys _is_ fine, thank you very much. Fine enough not to argue with a ghost. So he doesn’t. He opens his eyes again, staring at the video. Vaughn’s up and moving around again, cured by Cassius’ suspect medicine. Rhys remembers how relieved he’d been and his stomach hurts. God, he misses Vaughn. He misses—

“Look at you, all wibbly over this pack of idiots. You know these people would sell you out for a pack of smokes, right?” Jack carries on, crystal-clear and undeterred. “Hell, even Abs here was only on Pandora for ten minutes before he was making deals with Wallethead. What was it you said, when I told you about everyone who’d betrayed me? Something about a common thread?”

Rhys’ exhale comes out shakier than he’d like. Frustrated, he curls his left hand into a fist and rests it on his lap. This is stupid. He’s not Jack. He's nothing like Jack.

“This is a waste of time,” says Rhys—to himself, not to Jack, because Jack isn’t real and Rhys isn’t crazy. He gives his head a shake, like it’ll help him reset. “You’ve got work to do.”

“Right, right, super important work for your imaginary company with no products, no money and no employees. Wouldn’t wanna skip out on _that_.” Jack laughs like nails down a chalkboard. “C’mon, Cupcake. Don't kid yourself. You're hiding in here, scared to rejoin the big bad world outside.”

“That’s not—” Rhys starts, before he catches himself, shuts his mouth and hangs his head. He takes a deep breath and it rattles in his chest. “I am not _hiding_ ,” he grinds out, for his own benefit, not Jack’s. 

“Sure, pal. When’s the last time you even talked to another human being, huh? Oh, I remember—was it right around the time you murdered all your coworkers? Just after all your bestest buddies here left you to die?”

“I am not doing this,” Rhys says, studying his knuckles as they turn white in his lap. “I am not going to argue with a delusion, I am—”

“Even what’s-her-name, Hyperion girl—you saved her life, like, twice and she didn’t even offer the last escape pod. Classic.” 

“—not going to argue with a delusion—”

“Y’know, you could die here and no one would even notice. You could hit your head in the shower and it’d be years before anyone even found the body. Even when they did, it’d be by accident.”

“Shut up,” says Rhys through gritted teeth, squeezing his eyes shut. “Please just shut up.”

Jack doesn’t, of course. Jack never shut up when he was alive, or when he was an AI, he’s certainly not going to shut up now that he’s a—whatever he is. Delusion. Hallucination. History’s worst imaginary friend. 

“None of these ‘friends’ you’re mooning over would even know you'd died.” Rhys hunches over in his chair, hiding his face in his arms, but it can’t block out the sound of Jack’s voice in his head. “Then again, if they did, they wouldn’t care anyway.”

Rhys’ face feels warm and his stomach churns. His chest feels tight and his heart won’t slow down and his breath catches in his throat. He thinks he might be sick.

“Leave me alone,” says Rhys, and though it’s only a whisper, it feels like crushing defeat.

“Take a look around, Rhysie.” Jack’s voice is inescapable. “You _are_ alone.”

The truth is a strike to the chest. Rhys folds in on himself, gulping down air and waiting for some kind of finishing blow. 

Nothing happens, though. Obviously. Jack was right—Rhys really is alone. 

He lifts his head slowly, reaching to pause the playback. On the screen, a little digital Sasha is frozen helping an semi-conscious Rhys into the room, while Vaughn and Fiona walk over curiously. In real life, Rhys is transfixed, staring at the screen, cursor hovering over the delete command.

He ought to delete the video. It has no corporate value, contains no information he didn’t already have, and it’s a waste of storage space. 

He can’t do it. 

With a swipe of his hand he shuts down the whole display, then stumbles to his feet and staggers away from the desk. He makes it out of the room and halfway down the hall before he starts to cry.

* * *

The good news is he doesn’t hear Jack’s voice again. It’s probably a stay of sentence, not a full pardon, but it’s something. 

The bad news is… Well. Everything else.

Rhys spends the next week in bed. About a week, anyway—time’s elusive when you spend it staring blankly at the ceiling or the wall. Once he's done crying, he doesn’t feel much of anything, and he should be concerned about that, maybe, but he isn’t. The emptiness is kind of nice. Liberating.

Eventually, though, he’s eaten every bit of food in his bedroom stockpile, and hunger drives him to his feet again. He’s almost to the kitchens when he gets pinged with a message, and that stops him in his tracks. Who would be messaging him? He wasn’t even sure he could get messages. 

The message itself is short, abrupt, and absolutely mind-boggling. Rhys reads it over three times to make sure he’s not delirious from hunger. 

_I need to hear your side of the story. Come meet me._

Attached are some coordinates. It’s signed with an F. 

You have to be pretty stupid to fall for a lie even when you know it’s a lie, and Rhys is a goddamn idiot. 

He reads the message once more, and he grins.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on Tumblr: [@oodlyenough](http://oodlyenough.tumblr.com/)


End file.
